The present invention relates in general to initiating sessions. In the following, the term “session” is referred to a call, a multimedia video call, a whiteboard session, a chat, a messaging session, a game session or the like. In case of starting such a session, the user does not know before whether the intended session partner is available or not.
For example, in case a user A wants to initiate a video call to a user B. For this, the user A has to prepare the communication and has to start corresponding applications on his terminal (e.g., a personal computer or a mobile communication device like UMTS mobile phone). In this case, it is disadvantageous when user B is not available (i.e., is not online) and the troubles of user A were in vain.
Currently, in Instant Messaging and Present Protocol (IMPP) the user can get further information before starting a session. Instant Messaging allows a user to forward messages to terminals of other users immediately without the use of e-mails or the like. Therefor, also the intended recipient of such an instant message must be online. Thus, it is necessary for the sender (user A) to know whether the intended recipient is actually online. This information is provided by a so-called contact list (also referred to as “buddy list”).
From this list, user A can get presence information, present status, location information etc. of the other users which are subscribed to such an Instant Messaging system.
The presence information indicates whether a particular user is online or offline. The present status indicates further whether the particular user is, for example, available, busy, available only for chat & games but not for calls and the like. The location information comprises information regarding the location like address, current position and the like (e.g. downtown Helsinki; Hauptstr. 12, 71069 Sindelfingen; longitude x, latitude y, altitude h etc.). Thus, by using this Instant Messaging and Present Protocol (IMPP), a user can get information regarding the presence of another user.
For Instant Messaging, many competing protocols are available, open and proprietary ones (e.g. AOL Instant Messaging), which are mainly designed for Personal Computer applications.
However, from the present protocols and resulting IMPP services, it is not possible for a user (i.e., the initiator of a session) to see how his session initiation will be handled.
That is, he may see from the contact list that someone is online, but it is not possible to see whether the recipient is actually prepared to accept a session like a call or the like.